Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 15. Scooter getting ready to CT-scan specimens for our study. Photo-
graph by Dean Falk.
In order to be ready to film on December 9, 2004, we needed to
CT-scan the specimens—and soon. And that would be just the begin-
ning. Knowing that our future research would require more virtual
endocasts from humans, chimpanzees, and early hominins, I packed up
seven boxes of endocasts and museum-quality casts of hominin skulls
from my collection in Tallahassee and mailed them (with some trepida-
tion) to St. Louis at the end of November. Fortunately they all got there.
Because we had a good deal of scanning, CT processing, and measur-
ing to do before film day, I made a preliminary trip to Mallinckrodt
to help with the legwork on December 1 and 2. Scooter had already
scheduled time for our specimens on the Siemens Sensation 64 clini-
cal multislice CT scanner at Barnes Jewish Hospital, in St. Louis (see
figure 15). It took hours to scan the specimens. The resulting three-
dimensional data were then delivered to Kirk, who would devote the
